Former slaves crafted planters’ return narratives to entrap and expel them

Evidence

On the plantation, Descourtilz observed, residents had taken over significant stretches of land to cultivate gardens to which they devoted “all their time.” Philippe, meanwhile, sought to continue the production of the cotton for which the plantation had once been famous. Descourtilz described Philippe as a horrid tyrant who terrorized the plantation laborers and angered them by flooding their gardens in order to irrigate the cotton fields. They longed, he claimed, for the return of their white masters. … The details Descourtilz provided, however, tell a different story. Plantation workers enticed Lachicotte and Descourtilz to the plantation by telling them that they wished to help them regain the plantation, but when they arrived they found that they had been tricked: they were bundled off and presented to local authorities, accused of stirring up trouble on the plantation. Philippe was steadfast in holding on to the plantation, but also quite hospitable to the two interlopers. Though he did not grant them any particular privileges, he did allow them to stay on the plantation and even lent them his carriage for their errands. He seemed to be willing to have them return as residents, just not as masters. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 805

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader theme of ex-slaves actively controlling the terms of former masters’ return, narratively similar to how freed people across the postslavery Atlantic managed land and mobility.
• QUESTION: How representative was Philippe as a black plantation commander/holder who continued commercial production while allowing black subsistence gardens? Worth checking against other plantation accounts of the period.